Goodbye, Elton John: Inside the music legend’s final Dodger Stadium concert
NEW YORK — For the final time in his career on Sept. 25, Elton John performed in a baseball stadium on New York’s West Side. He was in Los Angeles on the day after the end of the season. He was at Yankee Stadium for an anniversary concert on May 24, 1984, five months after he’d performed for the first time to a sold-out crowd. And there he was, doing the show two decades later with his wife, Olivia, just before the end of the season at Dodger Stadium.
And it was no longer John’s Dodger Stadium, but rather an empty stadium at the moment he delivered “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” It was, he declared, his last concert in any Major League venue. After John left Dodger Stadium, he did a pair of one-off shows in a ballpark just as big and just as empty. They were at the same venue, but for one night each.
“You can say anything you want, but it’s true,” John insisted after singing “Yellow Brick Road” Sunday afternoon. “I love the city of Los Angeles. I love my family there. I love the Dodgers organization. I love the fans. I’ve been there. I’ll be there. I’m going to have a ball.”
In the end, John’s Dodger Stadium performance represented the end of the beginning. He was done with the Dodgers. In fact, the “Curse of the Bambino” would end a day later on Sept. 25 when the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years. And Dodger Stadium would never come back.
The stage of Dodger Stadium, where John sang his farewell concert in ’84, has been empty since.
Abandoned on the last day of the year and a single night of the year, Dodger Stadium had not truly lived up
